


Hold My Life

by umadoshi (Ysabet)



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Adopted Sibling Incest, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Canon Disabled Character, Codependency, Community: hc_bingo, F/M, POV Female Character, POV First Person, Panic Attack, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 02:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysabet/pseuds/umadoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Is anyone dead?" I asked, a bundle of questions wrapped into one: </i>Was anyone bitten? Did anyone amplify? Did you just come home from shooting a friend?<i></i></p><p>
  <i>"No."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Which meant <b>he'd</b> had a close call, and since my brother's mission in life is to court death, any call close enough to scare him instead of thrilling him is something I know not to ask about.</i>
</p><p>Set a year or two before <i>Feed</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold My Life

**Author's Note:**

> Filling the "panic attacks" square on my hc_bingo card (on Dreamwidth).
> 
> Title from Tom McRae's "Language of Fools".

Every month or so, Shaun and a few other Irwins under the Bridge Supporters umbrella like to go on spontaneous field trips--"spontaneous" in the sense that they pick a day in advance and go out fully prepared, but basically throw darts at a map to see where they're going. It's a win-win for him, because the bunch of them get along well enough that they can make their own fun if none presents itself, and if fun _does_ present itself, they run it down like a pack of wolves.

The resulting footage goes up as part of a collaborative series with percentages that'd be too much of a pain in the ass to calculate if the lot of them didn't all have so much fun doing it, and it's a good way to pass viewers around. That's one of the great things about Irwins' content share: factual news is the _news_ , and a small, hardcore part of the audience will read a variety of Newsies' reports to get our different perspectives, but most people don't bother. On the other hand, action news aficionados--meaning the secondhand adrenaline junkies--are happy to go from site to site and see the same blood spatter from all possible angles.

By the time Shaun and the others have their fun, clean up, and "debrief", it usually means he comes home late, at least moderately drunk, and practically purring with contentment. I don't go to bed until he's back, but I've long since learned not to pay too much attention to how long he's been gone on one of those outings. He checks in periodically--erratically enough that there aren't scheduled times that I'd worry about if he missed them, but often enough to be reassuring.

I never ask for details of what they're up to. If I'm not there to yell at him in person, I don't want to know how risky he's being. I can see the footage he brings back. Sometimes I don't even look until he's got it cleaned and posted, just for the novelty of seeing it the way his audience does--or as close to it as possible.

One of the things his die-hard fans adore about him is how genuine he looks when he smiles into the camera. It's not the flirting that reels them in. It's the way he's sharing his joy. He makes it look so intimate, like he's performing just for you.

He's not. He's doing it for me.

\--From _Images May Disturb You_ , the blog of Georgia Mason. February 23, 2039. Unpublished.

**********

The best deaths are messy. You want to die with a smile on your face that says, hey, maybe my number's up, but I gave it my best shot.

The best deaths are also fast. It's not that I don't want to see it coming. You bet I do--you only die once, at least with your brain firing on all cylinders, and I don't want to miss it. Even if that means using that last bullet that's not for sharing, I think I'll be okay.

The only thing that really scares me is the idea of not being able to use that bullet. _I_ won't care if I convert, since I'll be a zombie and all, but it'd wreck George to know it happened to me. If I ever get bit when she's around, she'll take care of things herself, but if she's not there...she'll come find me, because that's what we do.

She'll find me and she'll end me, and she'll be smart enough not to let me hurt her, because George isn't one of Buffy's girls who always want to fling themselves on the metaphorical funeral pyre. But it'd fuck her up bad enough that I'll do pretty much anything to keep that from happening. I always know where that one bullet is.

Thing is, I don't have to be scared of a slow death to know I don't want it. I can handle pain. I've had plenty of it, and I know the tricks for coping. It's just that the tricks aren't always enough.

I want to die smiling because George will be watching. But if I can't manage that, the least I can do for her is not die screaming. Not with her listening.

\--From _Hail to the King_ , the blog of Shaun Mason. August 17, 2037. Unpublished.

**********

 

With Shaun expected to be out of the house doing God-knew-what for at least twelve hours, I had plenty of time to dig into the long-delayed next installment of one of my sporadic series. This particular one is on new permutations in mid-range security systems and how they reflect our cultural psyche and political climate, which is a lot more fun to write about than it is to describe--especially since Shaun's always happy to do a hands-on consult and expose the flaws in the new tech. There are _always_ flaws, because there's always something being overcompensated for, and that something is usually the seed of a story.

I was halfway through an acceptable first draft about pressure-sensitive motion detectors and so lost in concentration that I almost didn't notice when Shaun came home hours earlier than expected. It hadn't been his turn to drive, so there wasn't the usual sound of the garage and van doors to alert me. Instead it was Mom's voice that broke my train of thought, calling after him just as I heard his footsteps on the stairs.

His lack of response was enough to get my attention. He rarely stops to chat with Mom when he gets in, but ignoring her outright isn't his MO. I saved my files on autopilot and was already out of my chair when the door between our rooms opened. There was no warning knock, but he hadn't taken the time to turn his lights on, never mind off again. The only thing that came through was him.

He just stared at me from the doorway, hands half raised as if he needed to warn me off. The look on his face made my throat close with dread--which was stupid, because he was right in front of me and alive, and that was all that mattered.

"Is there any reason I can't touch you?" I asked.

The question broke his paralysis, but didn't wipe the haunted expression away. "No. I'm clean."

Clean. Not fine, not okay, but clean.

I nodded, choking down the urge to fling my arms around him. I took his hands instead and walked backwards to my bed, towing him with me.

"I'm clean, George," he said again.

"I know." But the repetition calmed me enough that I could hold him instead of clinging to him. He stumbled a little, as if he wasn't quite sure what we were doing. I kept from flinching through brute force; it was one thing for him to let me guide him, and quite another for him to be so passive when I nudged him onto the bed. The only movement that seemed entirely under his control was his arm going around my waist, making sure I came down with him.

"Is anyone dead?" I asked, a bundle of questions wrapped into one: _Was anyone bitten? Did anyone amplify? Did you just come home from shooting a friend?_

"No."

Which meant _he'd_ had a close call, and since my brother's mission in life is to court death, any call close enough to scare him instead of thrilling him is something I know not to ask about.

Neither of us said anything else for several minutes, while Shaun tried and failed to relax. He was lying right against me, but his entire body was taut and quivering like a plucked bowstring. If I'd been the one putting that tiny distance between us, it would have been normal, just me wanting to be close without melting into him. From Shaun, it was alarming.

With my hand on his chest, I could feel his racing pulse and the way he was working for each breath--not fast enough to make me worry about hyperventilation, but harsh and _wrong_ , as if there were a weight on his lungs. That gave me a reasonably clear idea of what was going on in his head and told me what I ought to be doing for him, but what use was that if he wouldn't let me--or wasn't able to let me--do it?

He was holding himself as if either I or the bed couldn't bear his weight, which gave me something simple and small to be angry about. That was good, in its way: I knew he couldn't help what he was doing, and _that_ let me take most of the anger and tuck it away to work through later, when I wasn't staring our mortality in the face.

"Shaun," I said finally, because one of us had to crack the silence open and it wasn't going to be him. "Look at me, okay?" Either he didn't notice the edge to my voice or he ignored it. His gaze shifted from somewhere over my shoulder to my face without focusing.

I tugged my sunglasses off so he could see my eyes. It didn't make him focus, but he automatically reached for my face, brushing the backs of his fingers against my temple. It gave me an opening to get my arm around him and close the minuscule gap between us, pressing our foreheads together, close enough that he wouldn't have been able to focus anyway. "Hey in there," I said. "You with me?"

"Yeah." He'd nearly managed to get his voice under control. If we'd been talking on an audio-only connection, I might almost have bought that he was pulling himself together. "I've gotta go get a shower."

The idea of letting him go sent a wave of nausea through me. "Not yet."

"I smell like something dead," he grumbled, making a blatant attempt at sounding normal.

I stiffened, digging my fingers into his back. "No, you smell like something alive that's had a terrible day." He absolutely reeked of bleach and acrid sweat, the kind that has everything to do with fear instead of a healthy workout. I kind of like the way he usually smells when he comes in from the field, sweating from exertion and glee, usually with the bonus scent of gunpowder all over his clothes, and high out of his head on endorphins. Just as well I like it, really, since more than once we've wound up stuck in the van for hours, just the two of us, putting all his extra energy to good use.

This was as far from that as I could imagine--I was going to have to wash my sheets to get the smell of his fear out--and I pressed my face into the crook of his neck anyway, greedily breathing it in. He _was_ alive, and he almost hadn't been, even if he wasn't going to share the details.

"Stay put," I whispered, and he shuddered like he wanted to pull away.

"I can't, George."

"Bullshit. Pretending you're less fucked up than you actually are instead of dealing with it now is only going to make you more fragile next time you're out there. You think I'm letting you do that?" I could hear myself sounding angrier with every word that wasn't _Fuck you for almost leaving me alone forever_ or _I'm not ready to die and I will die when you do._ I could let him hear the first, but not the second. Never the second. "Just stay here."

_Stay right here where I can touch you until we're both sure you're going to keep breathing for a while yet._

Shaun's shoulders slumped, putting most of his weight in my arms. He's not one of those massive guys whose strength shows in sheer bulk, but he's got a lot of muscle wrapped on his bones--way more than you'd think from the light way he moves. He easily weighs half again as much as I do. It felt like nothing. "Good," I said, taking a deep breath and settling in. "Good. There you go."

Sometimes knowing each other inside out is the reason there's nothing safe to say. None of the things I ever call him other than his name sound particularly affectionate, never mind loving and supportive, and I knew I wasn't going to stop sounding angry any time soon. That meant the usual array of insults, of "I love you" wrapped in bickering, was out. I _really_ didn't want him to hear the stark terror underneath the anger, and he would. He always did.

It was frightening how _small_ he felt, nestled against me like that. All I could do was hold on, running my fingers over his close-cropped hair. It had been bleached so aggressively on his way back to me that it felt almost like I could snap the individual strands. He hadn't even stopped to moisturize his skin, and he'd be paying for that sooner rather than later if we didn't get on it. Funny thing, how humans aren't actually designed to be drenched in bleach on a regular basis.

"Come on," I said, when his breathing had quieted and I finally trusted myself to speak. I grabbed my sunglasses from where I'd dropped them on the bed and put them on. "Let's go take care of your skin."

His eyes looked a little better when I pulled him to his feet, more like he was following my lead because he was choosing to, not because he couldn't trust himself to think. I undressed him anyway, once we were in the bathroom, with the soft white lights on for him and both doors locked--not something we usually bothered with, since the doors connecting our rooms to the rest of the house were already secure. He mostly held still for it, moving only to give me better access to buckles and zippers. The only sounds were our breathing and the soft thumps of each piece of clothing dropping into a sterilization bin.

When he was naked we looked at each other, conferring silently in the way that always confuses the hell out of other people. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that all the time they've spent learning to read their loved ones' eyes is time Shaun's spent learning to read the _rest_ of my face. It gives him a hugely unfair advantage when I have my sunglasses off and he gets to interpret the whole picture.

We already knew Mom wasn't going to come up after him; if she'd been going to, she would've been knocking only minutes after he got in. She also wasn't going to come ask me how he was. She'd trust me to report on his physical condition if he were sick or injured, but it's been years since she and I even went through the motions of discussing anything more emotional than "is anyone bleeding?" We were safely alone for the time being.

Consensus reached, I started stripping while he put his hand on the control pad and said his name. "Shaun Phillip Mason."

"Accessing travel records," the shower announced. It took longer than I expected to continue--long enough for me to see how Shaun was tensing up again. "You have been exposed to a Level 3 hazard zone. Please enter--"

"Additional data," he said, glancing back at me. _Don't ask_ , his eyes begged. "Cross reference travel records with documented off-site decontamination between 18:36 and 20:42."

There's no tricking the house system, but it stops logging details of who showers when and for how long if it can't find a reason to decontaminate us beyond the bare minimum. The computer conferred with the appropriate systems on the network. "Verified," it said, sounding almost grudging. The shower unsealed.

Of course, if _I_ touched the controls we'd be starting from scratch, never mind that I hadn't left the house in two days, so it was Shaun who said, "Set lights to default for Georgia Carolyn Mason. Set water temperature to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Suspend all timer functions post-bleach cycle."

"Acknowledged." The system officially no longer cared what we did--or what Shaun did, technically, since it wasn't logging my presence--as long as we went through the perfunctory fifteen-second bleaching that couldn't be avoided if we left the house at all. If he wanted to shower blind, that was his business.

Our licenses don't allow us into Level 3 hazard zones, and even Shaun wouldn't purposely cross that line and risk having it on his record when we turn twenty-five and apply for upgrades. All I could imagine was that he'd already been inside a Level 4 zone when its rating had changed, and I couldn't let myself think about that. Instead, I set my sunglasses beside the sink and grabbed his hands when the lights went black, holding on tighter than was strictly necessary to tug him into the shower with me.

Since we were both in there, I washed too, handing him the soap and shampoo when he needed them. He had to get the conditioner from the top shelf himself, reaching for it carefully in what his eyes registered as near-darkness; I don't use the stuff much, but his hair gets bleached a lot more often than mine. Sometimes he grows it out a little in the name of the rakish look that makes so many women want to jump him, and since plenty of them settle for buying t-shirts, it only makes sense for him to treat it as well as he can, even when it's short.

When we were clean I shut my eyes to join him in the dark, holding him so close that the hot water pooled between our bodies. The difference in our heights puts his heart exactly at my ear level, which I always like and am sometimes deeply grateful for. He clung back, resting his cheek on the top of my head, apologizing the only way he could.

In the warmth and the darkness, skin to skin, we both eventually calmed. It would have been incredibly easy to let that calm turn to something else. I only realized that my lips were drifting across his collarbones when I felt him shift his weight, backing off just enough to be clear that his response wasn't a demand.

Shaun's always been careful like that, and it's very deliberate. His first instinct in every arena of life is to push at any limit he comes across--except with me. With me, he's happy to make the first move, but never in a way that could read as pressure. He's also entirely happy to have me start kissing and undressing him whenever I feel so inclined, trusting that I read him well enough to not initiate anything when he's not in the right headspace.

I was pretty sure he was in the right headspace now-- _a_ right headspace, anyway--but his skin desperately needed a different kind of attention. I kissed the hollow of his throat with a sigh, stepping back, and he addressed the shower. "Clean."

"Acknowledged," it said, turning the stream of water off.

I rubbed my thumb across his hipbone, letting it linger. "Later?"

His hand came to rest on my cheek, fumbling just a bit in the dark. "I'd like that."

Once the air jets finished drying us off--not quite as effectively as usual with both of us in there, but close enough--I squeezed his fingers. "Hang on a sec."

"How come?" But he didn't press it when I didn't answer. Given how fidgety Shaun generally is, it's impressive how patiently he'll wait while I do things in the dark, like quickly moisturizing my own skin. It puts him into something almost like a meditative state when we're alone and he can't really see.

"Your skin's a wreck," I said when I'd dealt with mine. "Let me?"

His breath hitched. "Yes."

Nothing else needed saying. Since my bed was out of the question until I changed the sheets for fresh ones that didn't smell of fear, I slid my sunglasses and a robe on and led him into his room instead, where he lay down without any further direction.

He hissed a little when I started; on skin that raw, the lotion I was applying stung badly before it started soothing. "Shh," I murmured, and kept going.

It was exactly what we both needed. It let him focus on nothing but my hands; it let me touch every inch of his body slowly and thoroughly, feeling his tendons and muscles and scars, finding each pulse point. There was nothing out of the ordinary. I kept touching him, convincing myself: he wasn't injured.

Shaun let me draw it out for a long, long time--long enough that neither of us were pretending it wasn't for my sake by the end, not his. His breathing was slow and even when I finished. I closed my eyes to listen, cupping a hand against his throat to feel his heart beat into my palm, and he waited. Eventually he said, "George, are you okay?"

I managed a laugh. "Getting there." His pulse was steady, and when I looked, his eyes were calm. It would take longer for me. He'd almost lost his life. I'd almost lost _him_. Neither of us had any doubt which was worse.

He sat up and kissed my forehead. "Do you need to work?"

Work meant normalcy. Work meant Shaun was alive. And he knew--of course he knew--that I needed to not come apart now that he didn't need me to focus on him completely. _Thank you_ , I said silently. "I think it'll take me a couple of hours to wrap up."

"Okay." Warm fingers stroked the back of my neck, slid into my hair. "Have you eaten?" I shook my head, trying not to lean too much into his touch. "I'll go make something and bring it up."

"Mom made a casserole earlier."

"That makes things easier." He didn't have to ask why I hadn't eaten with our parents. They have a thing about family dinners when we're all home, but if Shaun is out, they let me get away with waiting for him. We can only assume the reverse would also be true; I so rarely leave the house without him that the theory's never been properly tested. "Do what you have to do, George. I'll grab you some food and a soda and we'll get our work done."

He hugged me hard when I nodded, but didn't hold on. While he went for food I'd have time to change my sheets and pick up the threads of the blog post I'd been drafting when he got home. There would be dinner and writing. We'd check in with Buffy and spend some time cleaning up our inboxes. He'd come to bed with me and we'd lose ourselves in each other for a while, and by then everything would be normal enough that I could let him hold me without feeling like it'd make me crumble.

"That sounds good," I said, and watched a smile break across his face like the sun.


End file.
